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Once the Tyranid swarm has taken all the delicious biomass on a planet, how do they leave? I understand that most/all of their planetary forces are melted down to be recycled, but that biomass has to get up to the big ships somehow. Any good sources for this kind of thing?

They consume it with giant straw-like tentacles. Nothing is left. Most Tyranids don't have functioning digestive tracts, as they aren't meant to live beyond a battle.

They make giant spires for the ships to send a proboscis down to drink it all up.

How the ships themselves got into orbit is a mystery since they came from out of the galaxy and any new ships are grown in orbit.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
How the ships themselves got into orbit is a mystery since they came from out of the galaxy and any new ships are grown in orbit.

For all we know they started there to begin with.

Isn't that how those ships from Farscape came to be?

M.

Biomass (tyranid AND local) all gets rendered down in the digestion pools, which funnel that material up to the hive ships via capillary towers (like an organic pumping station and pipe setup). FW used to do the capillary towers and spore chimneys as terrain pieces. MicroArts (in Poland) will be doing something similar.

None of the ground creatures go back to the hive "intact".
The hive sees them not as soldiers (for the most part) but as tools to achieve an objective.

Yeah, the fighter organisms kill everything, the rippers eat them then everything jumps into digestion pools to be nommed by the ships in orbit.

I bet they could just grow a giant mountain of biomass right up into space.

Malachon wrote:
I bet they could just grow a giant mountain of biomass right up into space.

That is exactly what they do, at least half way.

As mentioned, remaining Tyranid organisms in space re-gather the bio-mass (everything just hops into a liquid acid pool bath) by capillary towers...etc.

It is, honestly, why named Tyranid characters don't really make much sense.

Someat like these!

The majority of tyranid creautres don't have a very long life span. termigants for example only live a few days...they don't even have stomachs. The larger ones - a lot of them can fly.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

How the ships themselves got into orbit is a mystery since they came from out of the galaxy and any new ships are grown in orbit.

I like to think they originally just ate the planet they came from until they found themselves floating in the void.

 LunarSol wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

How the ships themselves got into orbit is a mystery since they came from out of the galaxy and any new ships are grown in orbit.

I like to think they originally just ate the planet they came from until they found themselves floating in the void.

I was especially curious how they could have gotten the propulsion to leave an atmosphere/gravitational pull unless they started on a very small world. Thanks for chiming in everyone! Great images Ratius

Considering that Tyranid ships are competitive in BFG, where broadside firepower is in the Teraton ranges, Tyranids must have access to energy sources far more productive than mere matter-antimatter conversion. Like the Eldar, they must use their psykic powers to tap the warp for energy. With that much energy at their disposal, as well as general telekinetic powers for certain synapse creatures and other kinds of warp powers, there should never really be any doubt that they can simply leave any earth like planet they encounter.


I mean, might as well ask for a non-psykic reason for why genestealer claws are able to rend through terminator armor.

They fly with a power of a big fart

 Elbows wrote:
As mentioned, remaining Tyranid organisms in space re-gather the bio-mass (everything just hops into a liquid acid pool bath) by capillary towers...etc.

It is, honestly, why named Tyranid characters don't really make much sense.

Name characters make perfect sense because they are enabled via several methods

1) Named species are powerful, but bred in small numbers. Essentially they are akin to unique characters save that they are not an individual. For whatever reason the Swarm can't make many more than one, likely them being resource intensive.

2) Tyranid Hives will preserve individual Tyranids and will keep a body of creatures alive for general defence. Whilst they can breed up anything they want, it makes sense to have a ready supply already alive and ready to go in an emergency. An individual like Old One Eye makes sense as it can easily be retained if it proves to survive battle after battle.

3) Whilst the Swarm appears to have near perfect control over its biology, some individuals appear to be unique evolutions where random chance of creation/evolution produces something unique that the Swarm either can't replicated or, again, can't replicated without serious investment of resources.



Otherwise yes the capillary towers suck up the biomass as its rendered down and the hive ships lurk in orbit sucking up the biomass from the planet like giant mosquitoes. The idea that a selection of warriors are kept alive planetside and then travel up the towers after the liquid biomass and are thus preserved alive after a world is taken is easy to imagine.

It's best not to think too much about Tyranid planetary consumption, because none of it makes sense.

Can I just list 1 question I have about the tyranid 'biomass' thing. And one comment about them. This has always confused me.

- Biomass. What is that? Is it just 'building mass'? What is it made out of? Is it just a neureshing liquid, or are there DNA strains in there? Supposebly the tyranids avolve after getting acess to new tyranid material. In the codex the elar are preventing tyranid fleets to meet so they do not share bioomass. But why is this? Can't the tyranids just manipulate forth some DNA?

Also, when they eat the plannet, why on earth do they leave stones behind? Shurley they would need some form of mineral in their diet. And most life on earth get their power from the sun. Sun charges plants, things eat plants, and around we go. Why do they not build big organic Dyson spheres? You know, just to absorb as much energy as possibly. Shurley a surpluss of energy must be included there somewhere? I don't just buy that biomass is just biological mass that used to be other things. Mineral and energy must be in there somwehere. Can the tyranid not transmitt sequences of DNA around? Do they have to bring samples near each other? Do they work like scientists do with CRISPR? They can only cut and glue DNA together, they can not create artificial DNA?

-Anyway. the comment about them. In the materix movies the religion of the programs have this religion about returning from the source. It is like raw unshaped creation. I think it is inspiered by some eastern religions but I am unsure of witch it is. It seems like the tyranids wants everything to return to the great pool of biomass. And while it sucks for most things, some enteties like the swarmlord and other hive tyrants get reincarnated. The race is eficiantly imortal. Am I the only one who thinks some of this is an inherert trait of the tyranids?

Tyranid fluff gets a big wand of "because, space magic." Their FTL gets retconned about every edition. Hell this new codex just dropped the issue altogether. Thermodynamics is conviently ignored as energy to consume "biomass" (whatever that actually is) is always treated as some sort of 1 for 1 situation. Tyranids should be pretty unscary since they travel slow in space, should take years if not decades to eat a planet, and can't just convert something organic into free energy without expending considerable energy in the process. But as I said, space magic.

 Niiai wrote:

- Biomass. What is that? Is it just 'building mass'? What is it made out of? Is it just a neureshing liquid, or are there DNA strains in there? Supposebly the tyranids avolve after getting acess to new tyranid material. In the codex the elar are preventing tyranid fleets to meet so they do not share bioomass. But why is this? Can't the tyranids just manipulate forth some DNA?

Also, when they eat the plannet, why on earth do they leave stones behind? Shurley they would need some form of mineral in their diet. And most life on earth get their power from the sun. Sun charges plants, things eat plants, and around we go. Why do they not build big organic Dyson spheres? You know, just to absorb as much energy as possibly. Shurley a surpluss of energy must be included there somewhere? I don't just buy that biomass is just biological mass that used to be other things. Mineral and energy must be in there somwehere. Can the tyranid not transmitt sequences of DNA around? Do they have to bring samples near each other? Do they work like scientists do with CRISPR? They can only cut and glue DNA together, they can not create artificial DNA?

-Anyway. the comment about them. In the materix movies the religion of the programs have this religion about returning from the source. It is like raw unshaped creation. I think it is inspiered by some eastern religions but I am unsure of witch it is. It seems like the tyranids wants everything to return to the great pool of biomass. And while it sucks for most things, some enteties like the swarmlord and other hive tyrants get reincarnated. The race is eficiantly imortal. Am I the only one who thinks some of this is an inherert trait of the tyranids?

They seem to be more like organo-machines, in that they act on an instinct to do what they do. DNA and similar chemicals can sometimes influence how they manifest, but they likely don't have any real control over it the way we are starting to. Maybe something high level, like "Create ones with big claws" but nothing specific. That's why they can't make Dysonsphere or whatnot, either.

Also, you don't need to take every last stone to get "some minerals". Every living thing has minerals in it.

Biomass, to me, sounds like Primordial Ooze (textbook definition aside).

M.

Typically speaking its best not to apply too much science to fantasy even if the fantasy is set in space. Otherwise it causes all kinds of problems; especially when you're trying to compare to a space world where you've got gods and chaos and such going on as well.



As for leaving behind a rocky husk one assumes that Tyranids devour all biological mass quickly and leave behind the bulk of mineral content as it takes too long for them to process for their needs. I've also got a recalling that they do harvest suns for energy and likely other energy sources as well; so that might well account for the conversion rates that occur during their devouring of a planet.


But its easier to just think of Tyranids as large leeches that float world to world; draining each one of the ready biological component and moving on.

It's documented that if the Tyranids are low on biomass they attempt to economise by employing the World War Z tower technique. Observe:

 Niiai wrote:
Can I just list 1 question I have about the tyranid 'biomass' thing. And one comment about them. This has always confused me.

- Biomass. What is that? Is it just 'building mass'? What is it made out of? Is it just a neureshing liquid, or are there DNA strains in there? Supposebly the tyranids avolve after getting acess to new tyranid material. In the codex the elar are preventing tyranid fleets to meet so they do not share bioomass. But why is this? Can't the tyranids just manipulate forth some DNA?

The technical definition is the total mass of all living organisms on a planet. Plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc...

The definition as it relates to tyranids is basically any material that they can use in their biology. Basically "Food". Which would extend to soil and some minerals, water, etc... as they are used in the biology of living things. Various gasses in the atmosphere would also apply. All that gets left behind when tyranids leave is a planet scoured down to bedrock, devoid of all but the thinnest atmosphere as even that gets sucked up.

So CRISPR is a teqnique where people can cut a bit of DNA out of something and glue that into something else. It is still in early stages, but anyway, is that how tyranids do it? Aprantly they adapt after getting acces to other aliences biomass.

In another fiction, Zerg in starcraft 2, abbathus create new strains of zerg by 'spinning sequences'. It souns to me that zerg can make new things. It appears that tyranids has a limited capabilaty to do this.

 Niiai wrote:


In another fiction, Zerg in starcraft 2, abbathus create new strains of zerg by 'spinning sequences'. It souns to me that zerg can make new things. It appears that tyranids has a limited capabilaty to do this.

Well, Zerg are based on the Tyranids so who knows :p

M.

It's clear that Tyranids have control over their DNA to some extent but there are clear limits that prevent them simply evolving perfect super warriors from the start. Others have theorised that Tyranid evolution is simply like fruit-flies - ergo they don't quite have perfect control over it and instead rely upon a mass scale evolution of the fittest - breeding Tyranids over and over to get the viable strongest strains to stand out; a vast waste of energy; but also potential.



Essentially whatever their control it allows them to evolve very quickly (by evolution standards) but at a rate which is still slower or equal to technological evolution rates within the world setting. Thus ensuring that Tyranids evolve to meet new threats; to present new ones of their own; but never to be able to simply evolve so far beyond that they beat everything.


And that stickler is the sticky point that holds the story in limbo - the Imperium and its madness with distrust of technology and its engrained dogma; the Eldar fallen from grace; the Chaos stealing what the Empire has (and theories that the Chaos gods want to prolong the war for every to feed off the suffering and emotion rather than simply end it and win); orks and their crazy mad tech etc...

 Niiai wrote:
Can I just list 1 question I have about the tyranid 'biomass' thing. And one comment about them. This has always confused me.

- Biomass. What is that? Is it just 'building mass'? What is it made out of? Is it just a neureshing liquid, or are there DNA strains in there? Supposebly the tyranids avolve after getting acess to new tyranid material. In the codex the elar are preventing tyranid fleets to meet so they do not share bioomass. But why is this? Can't the tyranids just manipulate forth some DNA?

Also, when they eat the plannet, why on earth do they leave stones behind? Shurley they would need some form of mineral in their diet. And most life on earth get their power from the sun. Sun charges plants, things eat plants, and around we go. Why do they not build big organic Dyson spheres? You know, just to absorb as much energy as possibly. Shurley a surpluss of energy must be included there somewhere? I don't just buy that biomass is just biological mass that used to be other things. Mineral and energy must be in there somwehere. Can the tyranid not transmitt sequences of DNA around? Do they have to bring samples near each other? Do they work like scientists do with CRISPR? They can only cut and glue DNA together, they can not create artificial DNA?

Given an infinite number of ways that life could be put together, it would take an infinite amount of time to muck about with DNA and DNA-like stuff to create something useful. Tyranids just take advantage of nature's constant tweaking through random mutations and harvests everything that lives to get access to the best DNA toys.

They leave barren husks of the most basic rocks. All the actually useful minerals get absorbed by the fleet. There is no point using energy to propel teratonnes of silicon about though as they can get that anywhere.

In old fluff hive ships have Norn Queens who control the evolutions and iterations. Norn Queens have not been mnetioned outside of the Norn Crown Bio Artifact since Epic I think... but at least a few editions .

I think one is mentioned in the Ultramarine novels.

As Tyranid lore is written reports I think that Norn Queens just don't get much of a mention because you don't typically get onto a Hive Ship and make it off alive again.

I think there's also a bit of debate as to where a Norn Queen begins and a Hive Ship ends; which is to say that they could easily be one and the same organism or a duality bound so tight that one can't live without the other.

The Dominatrix exists much like that - at least in the Epic 40K setting it had a throne upon which the Dominatrix rode the beast below it.